NEW YORK TIMES BEST HISTORICAL FICTION OF 2020 "Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso."—Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno From a supremely talented author comes this brilliant and inventive literary work of historical fiction, set in Rome in four different centuries, that explores love in all its various incarnations and ponders elemental questions of good and evil, obedience and free will that connect four unforgettable lives . Spanning two thousand years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair. Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith. Their small rebellions are witnessed and provoked by an omniscient, time-traveling Satan who, though incorporeal, nonetheless suffers from a heart in search of repair. As their dramas unfold amid the brick, marble, and ghosts of Rome, they each must decide what it means to be good. Twelve-year old Prisca defiles the scrolls of her father’s library. Felix, a holy man, watches his friend’s body decay and is reminded of the first boy he loved passionately. Giulia de’ Medici, a beauty with dark skin and limitless wealth, wants to deliver herself from her unborn child. Tom, an American biologist studying the lives of the smallest creatures, cannot pinpoint when his own marriage began to die. As each of these conflicted people struggles with forces they cannot control, their circumstances raise a profound and timeless question at the heart of faith: What is our duty to each other, and what will God forgive? Moving back through time from today (The Wilderness) to the Renaissance (The City) to the Middle Ages (The Grave) and finally to Rome under Marcus Aurelius (The Paradise), Tom, Guilia, Felix, and Prisca search and suffer for love in the eternal city, made vivid and familiar as they reappear in each century.

Camille must save Orleans in this high-stakes sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller.

Our supreme fabulist of the ordinary now turns his attention on a 9-year-old American girl and produces a novel as enchantingly idiosyncratic as any he has written. Nory Winslow wants to be a dentist or a designer of pop-up books. She likes telling stories and inventing dolls. She has nightmares about teeth, which may explain her career choice. She is going to school in England, where she is mocked for her accent and her friendship with an unpopular girl, and she has made it through the year without crying. Nicholson Baker follows Nory as she interacts with her parents and peers, thinks about God and death-watch beetles, and dreams of cows with pointed teeth. In this precocious child he gives us a heroine as canny and as whimsical as Lewis Carroll's Alice and evokes childhood in all its luminous weirdness.

With her client's husband somewhere between this world and the next, attorney Alexia Lindale makes an everlasting choice. The youngest son of a family consumed by greed, Baxter Richardson lingers on this earth in a coma. His wife wants him dead to protect her secrets. His brother wants him dead to gain control of the family empire. And though Baxter's father fights to keep him alive, even he has ulterior motives. But Baster has a surprising ally. A classically trained painist, Ted Morgan believes music can be used as prayer. And Ted's divinely-inspired playing has been slowly pulling Baxter back from the brink of death. Attorney Alexia Lindale represents Baxter's wife, Rena, but has no idea that she and her client are being played in a game that has higher stakes than a single legal case. As Baxter grows stronger, the more endangered he becomes. As Alexia navigates her responsibilities to her client, her relationship with the gifted musician, and her new relationship with God, she must discern the truth as it pertains to life, death, and life everlasting.

In a life filled with uncertainty, former missionary Elisabeth Elliot clung to the God who never left her side. Through the deaths of two husbands, a life of travel and danger, and raising her daughter as a single parent, God provided Elliot with a security that could not have come from relying on the world. In this handsomely repackaged edition of Secure in the Everlasting Arms, you are invited to join her as she recounts how she relied on God during some of the most amazing and difficult events of her life.

Each morning as the sun brightens the West African sky, mother and child prepare to start their day. They spend it bound together, the child riding on the mother’s back watching their world go past. Pounding millet, drawing water from the well, visiting friends, shopping at the outdoor market—days are shared in perfect step with one another. And even when the child grows big enough to go off and explore their world, the everlasting embrace endures. Illustrated with E.B. Lewis’s stunning watercolors that bring to life the land and people of Mali, Gabrielle Emanuel’s tender story celebrates the universal bond between mother and child.

With great pleasure we offer this daily devotional of meditations from the late Rev. Frans Bakker (1919-1965). His devotionals and meditations proved to be comforting and edifying to many of God's people in the Netherlands. Writing in a simple but penetrating style, Bakker emphasized the fullness of Christ for needy sinners. In The Everlasting Word, all of Bakker's published meditations have been translated and compiled with additional selections from his sermons. We trust that the result is a collection filled with great nuggets of spiritual wisdom that you will enjoy. May this devotional be both an encouragement that edifies God's people and an admonition for a life with Christ in the present age.